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SUSQUEHANNA 


And as I saw one after another, pleasant 
villages, cars upon the highways, and fishers 
by the stream, .... 7 began to exult with 
myself upon this rise in life like a man who 
had come into a rich estate. And when 1 
asked the name of the river from the brakes¬ 
man, and heard that it was called the Susque¬ 
hanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be 
part and parcel of the beauty of the land. . . . 
That was the name, as no other could be, for 
that shining river and desirable valley. 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 


SUSQUEHANNA 

BY FREDERIC BRUSH 



PORTLAND MAINE 
THE MOSHER PRESS 
MDCCCCXXIV 






/°S 3 S'03 

,R11$6 

/9Zi 



COPYRIGHT 
FREDERIC BRUSH 
1914: 1920: 1924 


©C1AS07600C 



FIRST EDITION 
SECOND EDITION 
THIRD EDITION 




FEBRUARY, I914 
MAY, 1920 
OCTOBER, I924 




CONTENTS 


SONG OF THE HUNTED ..... 3 

FRIEND ....... 5 

WHITE WATER ...... 6 

MOUNTAIN VALLEY ..... 7 

TSEN-MIN ....... IO 

A FISHER BY THE STREAM . . . . 12 

THE DROWNED BOY ..... 21 

GIRL AT THE MILL ..... 23 

MARSH CHILD ...... 25 

SPRING FLOOD ...... l6 

UNADILLA WOMAN ..... TJ 

LORAIN ....... 29 

STORM ON THE BAY ..... 30 

RIVER BRIM ...... 31 

THE HIGH ROAD TO MEHOOPANY 33 

newman’s rift ..... 35 

CONOWINGO ...... 37 

PEACHBOTTOM ...... 39 

SQUIRE DIMON ...... 4 2 

TYASKIN ....... 45 

THE OLD DRUNK MAN . . . • • 4^ 

HAPPY IS THE MILLER .... 50 


V 









CONTENTS 


DUTCH HILL PICNIC 

• 

• 

• 

• 

53 

STARUCCA DAN 





55 

THE NEEDLE’S EYE 





58 

UNCLE JOHN 





60 

HICKORY DANCE . 





62 

CULTIVATION 





64 

RED ROCK SPREE 





66 

AUCTION 





70 

HARFORD FAIR 





74 

COUSIN EBER TINKLEPAUGH 





79 

HOUND 





81 

THE LITTLE BROTHER’S RIDE 




83 

CARAWAY 





88 

SEND ME WITH BEAUTY 





89 

ON THE WAY 





90 

WHY DO I LOVE HIM . 





93 

EVENING AT WYSOX 





95 

SOFTLY YOU ENTERED . 





97 

THE DIVIDE 





99 

THE HOLLOW FIELD 





IOI 

MICHAEL ANGELO AND THE 

STUDENT 



103 

BY A VILLAGE WINDOW 





106 

TWO MEN IN A VALLEY 





107 

A SONG FOR MIDDLE AGE 





108 

STILLWATER FARMER 





109 

CANOE 





114 

RIVER SONG 





11 5 

ONE SUMMER 





116 


vi 






CONTENTS 


TOR-TOR 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

117 

FROM THE WARS*. 







THREE BROTHERS 






Il8 

THE HILL MAN 






120 

MANILA BAY 






122 

AMERICA REPAYS 






I24 

SOLDIER HOME 






12 5 

TWO TOGETHER . 






126 

GRAY WORLD 






128 

WHEN WINTER COMES 






130 

THE FERRY 






131 

MOTHER 

• 

• 

• 

• 


134 

RIVER MOUTH 

. 

. 

. 

. 

• 

136 












SUSQUEHANNA 






































































































SONG OF THE HUNTED 


A WAKE, awake, the sun-kiss take! 
^ And blink the rheumy eye. 

Lead freely in the open, 

Let out the wild woods cry. 

He came to snare, 

He came to kill, 

He of the iron arm and will; 

But under the cliff he lieth still — 

And no one saw him die. 


Breast and cleave the frosty air! 

Beat the blue lakes to foam. 

Tell all the young in nest and lair 
The highland yet is home. 

He came to kill, 

He came to snare, 

But the gray fox found him lying there, 
And dark red was his matted hair— 

Roam, ye of the forest, roam! 

Then, awake, awake, and the sun-kiss take! 
We have turned the evil thing. 


3 



No beast shall drag the red leg home, 
No bird the broken wing. 

He came to maim, 

He came to kill, 

He of the iron arm and will; 

But under the cliff he lieth still — 
And no one saw him die. 


4 


FRIEND 


A S I stayed hopeless by the yellow mounds, 

^ Where all the garner of the bright years lay. 

He came, and saying nothing did my work, 

As ’t were a common day. 

When the slow season turned, again he came 
And led me up where far the river gleamed, 

Telling for hours of things that were to be 
Nobler than youth had dreamed. 

Last shone the sun on our high mount alone; 

And olden truth in bannered flame unfurled: 

The dark is rest, and ever sweeps the day 
Over a better world. 

O Friend, you are the greatest gift. When fall 
The chill gray shadows on the path of life, 

You come, and bring the love of each and all — 
Child, mother, brother, wife. 


5 


WHITE WATER 


A T end of dreamy miles the curve, 

* ^ Roar, rock and stinging pume; 

And what was life above, below 
May never quite resume. 

The years no measure are; we go 
Dour on the holden way; 

The mountain slips, fear thralls, love smites — 
And life pours in a day. 

Give me the hours that overweigh 
Time, and all rules of three; 

Yielding torn visions through the mist 
Of an eternity. 

The kiss that seals, death’s honest face, 

The infant at the breast, 

The blow, the hand-clasp and the tear 
Are more than all the rest. 


6 


MOUNTAIN VALLEY 


TN Mountain Valley morning comes upon the gray 
moon-glow 

When all the gorges lie in fog and dreaminess below. 
There days are long, 

Worn memories throng, 

And longings overflow. 

Lorena through the frosted pane of her brown cottage 
hold 

Looked out on tinted snow ascud o’er miles of dreary 
wold. 

The wan sun stole 
Into her soul, 

For she was growing old. 

Some creature of the whited road, seen full two hours 
before, 

Had won the slopes and lingered now a mile below her 
door; 

On the uptrail 
In dire travail 

It fell to stir no more. 

Upthrough the drift and shriveling cold, bound on the 
wooden sled, 

By superwoman dole and stress, were he alive or dead, 
In mother thought 
The man was brought 

Unto her narrow bed. 


7 


Lorena bared the traveler’s face and gazed into the eyes 

Of youth’s lone love come wandering back, as homing 
night-bird flies. 

Long she knelt 
And quivering felt 

The withered past arise. 

In Mountain Valley love strikes down like summer- 
noon cyclone, 

All sure delights of yesterday so fleetly to unthrone. 
Pent hates flame, 

Till shrived and lame 

The prisoners lie alone. 

When the old maiden’s tears had passed as wanes the 
showered stream, 

She rose with widened querying eyes and cheeks’ 
unwonted gleam, 

To dower there 
With wondrous care 

This salvage of a dream. 

Years of prisoned womanhood enwrapped the frail 
outcast. 

At dawn he smiled, and knew her face and babbled of 
the past. 

It heartened so 
She did not know 

The life was ebbing fast. 


8 


The hearth-smoke died; till neighbors came and won¬ 
dered to behold 

One sitting by a stranger corpse in misery and cold. 
“The man is dead,” 

Was all she said; 

“And I am old — am old.” 

In Mountain Valley evening broods in ledge and cove 
alway, 

To steal down early after noon athwart the edge of day. 
There lives are dun, 

With death begun 

’Neath lichened overlay. 


9 



TSEN-MIN 


(“the mummy of a little girl.” 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.) 

W HY do I think of you here in the eddying Sus¬ 
quehanna, little Tsen-Min? 

My canoe swerves and returns, and the current of life 
Streams round me in loving and strife; 

All lose and all win. 

The leaping fish bends swiftly downward under the law 
To death in the larger maw. 

Infinite destinies in the ooze my gentle boat-waves shift. 
Swallows are gleaning numberless perfect lives in the 
air; 

The osprey over the rift, 

And the spider poised at the mouth of his cruel ten¬ 
uous lair, 

Strike and feed and are stricken in turn, as I circling 
drift— 

And dream of you, Tsen-Min. 

Many years have I gone to you there in the gloaming 
corner, silent Tsen-Min. 

All day the sober querying people leisurely pass 
Your straight swathed form in the glass. 

Once as I stayed late in the shadow aside, 

A high-blooded Saxon schoolgirl came and stood at 
your feet, 

And quietly cried. 

Then knowing the hour if ever was come, bending low 

io 


I called, for a whispered olden word, or sigh, 

Or even a moment’s glow 

In the gathering dark of your dusk-brown orient eye, 
And your smile— 

As once by the Nile. 

No answer; yet I will go to you, sure of our lives 
intertwining unto the end. 

If you are silent there is to be no calling out of the past. 
Only life-waves last; 

Trembling on through myriad other circles of love and 
of will, 

To break at eon’s end on a distant shore, 

Lulled in the final tapering roar; 

Merging at intervals in a passing life with doubled 
power, 

The lowering urn of being to refill — 

As you in me this hour. 


ii 



A FISHER BY THE STREAM 


HESE are the sayings handed down 



1 By Abner Breen of Taylortown. 
Soldier, woodsman, farmer, sage, 

Who went bold-eyed from youth to age, 

Saw from his cove the same truths run 
Through burg and kingdom, mote and sun — 
And kinless in life’s waning part 
Let the sure river lave his heart; 

Beyond full years with service rife 
Lone watcher by the flow of life, 

Content in time to pause and dream, 

A gray-brown fisher by the stream. 


When you don’t know what to do, 

Wait and let the quiet through. 

Where two roads halt your eager quest, 
Take one—and it will seem the best. 

Star-shooting, as the books advise, 

Leaves most folks neither rich nor wise. 

Aim for the breast; a misser may 
See the dirt fly anyway. 

Youth broods: There stand the older men, 
I wait to glean their wisdom, then — 

No other age can tell you how; 

You’ll ne’er be better; do it now. 


12 


In master trouble, toil or wreck, 

Draw in the belt and loose the neck; 
With blood in head and pouter breast 
Bear on; sheer luck controls the rest. 

Ask not how far nor of the storm. 

Stride on, earth yields, an hour is warm 
Upon our road, all’s fair iwis — 

Who promised better time than this? 

Don’t loaf in broad daylight, you cry, 
Nor pause and overplay, and die 
With many things undone. Can you 
Read the list of what to do? 

Enmarch, with midriff low and chin 
Athwart the skyline, buckled in, 

Loath to repress the sprung thigh’s urge 
In mid-forenoon — is life full surge. 

See how the walker takes the hill 
With lowered brow and stiffened will. 

He knows how many ills betide 
Untiming of the wonted stride. 

Engineer and ferryman 
Seem ever fit and of the plan. 

So aptly on the way to fare 
Is succeeding anywhere. 


13 


Get a job and house and wife; 

No good to cringe nor tear at life. 

He that holds an even gait 
Seldom needs to strain or wait. 

Young men before their mating time 
Sing on the roads and practice rhyme; 
With the second baby’s cry 
Come years of sober voice and eye. 

Grudge or sorrow have you low? 

Go down and watch the river flow. 
Look at trees and walk a mile — 

Enter the kitchen with a smile. 

How surely in the after-year 
Outdoor events hold sweet and clear; 
Wise then our friends and faith to try 
More openly beneath the sky. 

Walkers learn through pain and rue, 
Foot must harden to the shoe. 
Blister-grooves with tough skin fill; 
Too many changes thin the will. 

Second view of fact or word 
Is better than the first or third. 

Deeds that morrows least rescind 
Are mostly done on second-wind. 


H 


Life proffered, eagerness of fire, 

The whining sore-foot hound's desire, 
Wrestle, and scream of violin— 

Tell the ardent force within. 

But for the happiness that thirls 
In puppy-dogs and little girls, 

And older woman's quenchless smile— 
The course would hardly be worth while. 

From the barn-door, a rainy day, 

Our lives look bounteous, even gay. 
Abide; we squander noblest dowers 
Hurrying these pregnant hours. 

Wind, rain, fire, surf, and the low seethe 
Of brain at night, and all that breathe 
Vary one murmurous tone—maybe 
The core-sound of eternity. 

Work of morning's nervous rage 
Least withstands the wear of age. 

For every road and faith and right 
Some one toiled numbly into night. 

War and love still lead the race; 

Not yet plain living takes their place; 
Nor can, before the ages drill 
Like powers of sacrifice and will. 


15 


I heard the speakers in the hall 
Rave to high heaven and butt the wall. 

A man and woman resolute 
By one day’s work all these confute. 

In two-hour spells of high desire 
We trip surefoot above the mire. 

But how to make these fairies stir, 

Stay longer or come oftener? 

If Peter Kip were here to-night 
Talk would leap outward, eyes grow bright, 
Our humor changed from might to can 
By one true simple quarryman. 

Tight piling makes the hottest fire; 

In a still wood the sparks go higher. 

Not much occurs till folks get near. 

Lone sitters see a few things clear. 

Hours spent on river isles 
Memory bright like woman’s smiles; 

As wider glimpses of the whole 
Are caught from islands of the soul. 

Where is this Beauty? — in the thing, 

Curve of meadow, pale smoke-ring, 
Mountain azure, ringlet blown 
And shaping of my girl’s cheek-bone? 


16 


Or have pleasing visions wrought 
Ages through the eye and taught 
Beauty in the mind to dwell? 

I look and ask, and none may tell. 

Leaf-fire smoke and river ooze 
Are the two perfumes I choose. 

Water alone of all earth’s range 
Stays beautiful in every change. 

Keenest nature-sound of all 
Is the blue-jay’s anger call. 

When from the chestnut grove it rings 
I sense the unfaltering pour of things. 

October morn in high Montrose 
Holds summer in the breath of snows; 
Too pungent there the frosted leaf 
Sends up underlying grief. 

Spoke my boy upon the hill 
Where our forebears lie so still: 

“If you must soon be buried here 
Why not play with me this year?” 

Lowering Steve we mainly thought 
Of all he changed and scarred and fought; 
Long hours, urgent, laughless, mad — 

I never shoveled grave so sad. 


17 


Till Oren with the beamy eye 
Said, “Lucky everyone must die. 

Hand me the jug—on from this day 
I run with them that ease and play. 

Money men as age comes nigh 
Build mansions on the hills and die. 
Mid-people close the out-rooms and draw 
Nearer the fire, within the law. 

Poor Lief toiled bravely to the end 
Bad bargaining in vain to mend; 

Not even throes of genius can 
Save a faulty ground-floor plan. 

Success? To live a little higher 
Than your friends and facts conspire. 
Cripple, president or fool 
Well are measured by this rule. 

Wilbur Doble learned to talk 
Sooner than to think or walk; 

And from red youth to elbow chair 
His impress went upon the air. 

Main I know of deity 
Is here in all I feel and see. 

Yankee, Asian, priest or clod 
Finds a way with his own god. 


18 


Falling leaves and dying men 
Tell no hope to rise again. 

I’ve seen all kinds of people go; 

All say at last, “I do not know.” 

If some great father cares for man, 

Grass and worm are in the plan. 

Any haven that welcomes me 
Will take my dog and walnut tree. 

I reckoned fairly how old age 

Brings ache, slow wit, the blurring page, 

And isolation futureless— 

But not on this long tiredness. 

A frail old maid on Locust Hill 
Taught us the use of love and will; 

And passed. We waver and forget, 

But she goes in our children yet. 

What lingers? Youth’s first stroke of power, 
Three woods-fire friends, a mother’s hour, 
Work that drove along new shores 
And lovers’ greetings out of doors. 

My comrades mourn each cellar-mound, 
Crying: “What use? All goes to ground!” 
But every home-scar signs a place 
Of service in the human race. 


19 


The happiest hour? It comes full-bloom 
About the bride, anear the tomb, 

With fame or void, in struggle ghast 
Even it may be the last. 

Who scans the eras scarce may doubt 
The race of man will taper out. 
Perchance to-day we crush or spurn 
The creature formed to rule in turn. 

Fairest mark for those that pass? 

An earth-bank covered thick with grass. 
All they were and did and said 
Runs onto life’s unceasing thread. 

Fishing by this maple log, 

I may neither harm nor clog; 

So to avoid that last ungrace 
Of old age struggling out of place. 


20 


THE DROWNED BOY 


T HAVE no shame that I sang through the rift 
And laughing leapt among them on the bar— 

Nor sorrow for my soul’s too early scar 
As there withdrew youth’s gift 

Of utter hopefulness—only long fear 

From seeing one so lone with many near. 

She quivered down as with an ague chill. 

A whimsy smile lurked on the boy’s wan face, 

Turned full into the sun. We curved a space 
About them and were still. 

Ripe summer droned with life in flower and tree; 
From the cove near a thrush sang cruelly. 

They brought the little clothes and spread them on. 
One kneeling murmured: “He was loaned awhile, 
And now is taken to the Master’s smile— 

A heavenly embrion. 

Praise God and rise.” With tortured look and hand 
The mother drove her back into the sand. 

“We are whirled midges in a storm,” I said. 

“Old Nature gleans and moulds and random sows, 
Rears beauty on decay, annuls our woes, 

And recreates the dead. 

And you shall rest in her, and soothing time.” 

She crumpled lower in the river slime. 


21 


Then one drew off an eager babe from breast, 

And wound her warm arms round the shaken one: 
“Weep, Myra, weep with me for your lost son; 
The hour is not for rest.” 

They broke and made a litter of my oar— 

And past with shining faces up the shore. 


22 


GIRL AT THE MILL 


A LISON of Manatoom 
^ ^ Heard the waters sith and fall 
Down the old flume’s mossy length 
To the ruined wall; 

Heard the spray-fog drip and drip 
From the mouldering undersill, 

Till with evening shadows came 
The Spirit of the mill: 

“Alison, Alison, 

So life’s stream doth run and run. 

Give—love and give, nor count each cost; 

For love alone is never lost.” 

Alison sat very still 

And felt her heart’s blood pause and flow; 
It was as if a hundred years 
There did come and go. 

Alison sat very straight 

And tried to know what she had heard, 
Straining to catch from out the mist 
Again the whispered word: 

“Alison, Alison,-” 

She was too young to hear and know, 

Too old to laugh and go away; 

And so she sat beside the mill 
And listened every day. 


23 


Alison of Manatoom 

Where the waters glide and fall 
Heard no more from out the mist 
The wandering Spirit call: 

“Alison, Alison, 

So the stream of life doth run. 

Love—give and love, nor count each cost; 
For love alone is never lost.” 


24 


MARSH CHILD 


TTAIR Colyn is going to sleep 

-*■ Down where the pert hylodes peep. 

Where brown waters dimly creep, 

Sweet Colyn is going to sleep. 

There the pale-eyed pickerel lads 
Doze beneath the lily pads; 

And fifteen hundred frogs or so 
Have no other place to go. 

Within the old stump’s hollow cup 
All night the waves go plup — plup — plup. 
And when the sky is clouded o’er 
Sometimes you hear the hornpouts snore. 

Hark, Colyn! Along the grass 
I hear the whispering marsh-breeze pass. 

It wanders off across the hill, 

And now the very stars lie still. 


25 



SPRING FLOOD 


I RAISED her head upon the shore, 

Until the bramble caught her hair. 

Ah! it was good to see the sky, 

And taste the air. 

The brown surge pressed her close to me; 

I had of strength to cling and live; 

Yet through my soul such music ran 
As angels give. 

Slowly the red blood filled her lips; 

She lived! I wound a strand of hair 
Around the precious willow stem, 

And kissed her there. 

I sometimes wish the tugging flood 

Had loosed me then and borne me down. 
It were not bad at life’s full tide 
To kiss and drown. 

For when with first inquivering breath 
She called another’s name that day, 

I knew that I was out upon 
A long new way. 


26 


UNADILLA WOMAN 


OINGING in the morning, 

^ On a hillside where the land is stony, 

Through fog and rain 
A ballad of old lovers 
Comes down broken 

With sounds of moiling and the cry of children — 
One in illness. 

How do I know 

Eyes were hazel-brown and flecked 
With fire-points, and her bosom 
Ample for all homing heads, 

Sweet breath and song-words. 

Drifting below the island screen 
No oar broke my harkening— 

Till the airy cadence faltered, died 
In purr of waters. 

Long day down 

Through hidden hills and mellow steaming pastures, 
By sewer-mouths of towns, 

Droll fishermen 

And swart teamsters at the ferries cursing — 

I bore her voice along, 

As a friend’s call out of absence, wondering 
How much was her very own, or whether 
Harmony would come to others—me, 

On gray mornings, living so 
By the river. 


27 




Woman is the river, 

Threading ripple-song and mirrored heaven 
Through the human jungle; 

Draining wood, cave, bog, absorbing, fining 
Slime-water, rain and soil— 

Merging all, yet all alone; 

Never pure but purer 

Ever by a ray, one fine hair-breadth of measure, 
Than the river border. 

O, the crooning mothers! 

And smiling ones that hover others’ children; 
Rose-white, ebon, brown 
Arms through murky ages holding 
Tender life or weary. 

Wherever love infolds, 

And roofs are thrown over age or mewling, 

And men go silently 

To toil or foreign legion there will be 

Unadilla woman 

Singing in the morning. 


28 


LORAIN 


T3 EFORE I knew you, dark Lorain, 

My life was throng of casual days 
Gone wandering down the wonted ways, 
Like children in a village lane. 

And now I seeming live to care 
For those few hours of fair emprise 
In kingdom of your voice and eyes, 

And woman fragrance of your hair. 

Proud hair that thrones the etcher’s art 
In queenly poise of wave and ring, 

To ripple down at last and cling 
Around the columns of the heart. 

Eager, with youth-fires all aglow, 

You flare along the heights afar; 

Inspirer, lover, wildering star— 

Yet some day, lingering, you will know. 

And somewhere down the unknown way 
I’ll come—and you with no alarms 
Will let me take you in my arms 
And kiss your eyes again, and say: 

Where have you been, my wild Lorain? 
Since you were gone all of my days 
Have wandered in strange vagrant ways, 
Like children in a village lane. 


29 



STORM ON THE BAY 


G OLDEN sun in the piney west; 

Ships of gold on an opaled sea, 

Ever go sailing and sailing by 

Into the night where longings die— 

And never come in to me. 

Silver moon high out in the east; 

Silver ships on a shimmering sea 
Go sailing and sailing all trim and true, 
While I am waiting a word from you— 

And never one comes to me. 

Lightnings cleave the glooming west; 

Storm and night meet over the wave; 
And his ship out on that starless sea 
Is fighting for life and home and me— 

O, if prayer could save! 

Morn is streaming out of the east; 

Blackest night and the storm's low moan 
Are over my soul forevermore. 

The neighbors gather about my door; 

But I am alone—alone. 


30 


RIVER BRIM 


J RAN to the river brim 
Crying—crying. 

To lay all I held of him 
By the rainy willow tree 
Where a numb, seared half of me 
Seemed dying. 

Morning I began to hear 

Sliding—sliding, 

Hill flood waters passing near. 

Clouds flared with rose, bird-song renewed, 
I felt the world’s old plenitude 
Abiding. 

So I arose and faced the sun, 

Reeling—reeling, 

Into another course begun; 

Following new dream and star, 

Strong growths drew across the scar, 
Concealing. 

Then out along the thoroughfare 
Spending—spending, 

Nerve and laughter, time and care; 

And more I gave outright and gay 
Came back threefold another day, 
Forefending. 


3i 



Till from excess and new love’s pride 
Glowing—glowing, 

“Freedom, full noon — all’s here!” I cried. 

The old wound twinged, athwart the dark 

A turning countenance past stark 
And knowing. 

Calling: Unbruised no life may run 
Scaling — scaling. 

Dread turmoil and joy are one. 

Wounds armor; triers early know 

’Tis in the plan to love and go 
Travailing. 

All come to the river bank 

Weeping—weeping, 

In wet weeds and forest dank 

To lie through ageing hours outdrawn 

With no ease, no joy of dawn, 

Nor sleeping. 

Some linger there, but them that rise 
Braving—braving, 

Have gleams of seership in their eyes; 

All shaken ones they bind around 

With strands of friendliness profound, 
Saving. 


32 


THE HIGH ROAD TO MEHOOPANY 


T LEFT the gala-bannered town, 

Apast the inn, the bridge, the fair, 
And swung through maple leaves to where 
A palsied door-man signed to me 
The high road to Mehoopany. 

“Point me the way of life, old man? 
Eighty years is enough to know. ,, 

“I feel the storm-pains—traveller, go!” 
“But given the course again to run?” 

The same;—now glad there is only one.” 

Sudden is Beauty: I saw her plaid 
Flit and gleam on the narrow plain, 

Round bosses of the tanned moraine; 

Then from rise of a gentle hill 
She fronted smiling in Eatonville; 

Beckoning till the storm-cloud fell — 

Fair hamlet by the chaffering stream, 
Through years of memory you seem 
Not man-wrought but a mural part 
Of eldest nature’s flexile art. 

But nought the forenoon walker stays; 
Beauty, fire nor homely grace— 

Sting of slant rain on the face. 

Left aside are time and age; 

Beyond the curve is heritage. 


33 



A lumberman stood by his mill 
Beset by flood, and scanned with pride 
His trails high on the mountainside. 

The storm had housed the lesser men, 

And bore their gear adown the glen. 

“ Captain, I seek the rule and place.” 

“The best is here; pursue no more. 

Your heaven runs a league before. 

The spectre of dull age appears: 

All to implore are ten bold years.” 

The sun broke through, the blue-jay squalled, 
And carrying far above the vale 
My footing spurned the red-brown shale 
O’er singing ridges—to look down 
On friendly water, field and town. 

A young girl romped the pasture glade 
In sumac flame; her glance and call 
Shot springtime through the heart of fall. 

The river’s blue-gray coil below 
Borrowed from her eyes’ clear glow. 

“Where is fountain of your joy? 

Hoiden, you are the living way! 

How came you on from yesterday?” 

She only laughed and signed to me 
The high road to Mehoopany. 


34 


NEWMAN’S RIFT 


IMPERIOUS as of yore 
^ I hear your solemn roar 
Come through the night-fog chill. 
The town and woods are still; 
Deep under nature’s breast 
There is no rest. 

With steadiness of doom, 

’Neath ice, in summer heat, 

You gnaw the indrawn feet 
Of couchant Manatoom; 

Till mountain and terrain 
Are ground to like again, 

Where levels of brown mud 
Allay your flood. 

Here on the burial hill 
Where elders watched us brave 
In sport thy treacherous wave— 
Above the cliff, sans will, 

We gather stilly home 
To merge in the yellow loam; 
And wait till down your tide 
In wheel of life again, 

Harried by wind and rain, 

We too shall ride. 

And far: through mother ooze, 
Atomies’ play, stressed rock, 


35 



Crystal and earthquake shock, 
Into cells that suffer and choose. 
Immured in the deep sea press 
With ultimate quietness, 

Or high on radiant wing, 

In hour of heart’s excess 
Loverly to sing. 

All life feels, has soul, 

Immortality—knows; 

Timefully strives and goes 
To death in the long parole. 

Porch rose and crawling slime, 

Its quivering path in time; 
Wind-tuning pine or snail 
Alike avail. 

Your thundrous voice shall die 
On some last ebbing sigh, 

And where stern tumult is 
Brood the old silences. 

Yet we go on awhile 
Who held the crowded hill, 

By spendings of love and will. 
Stroke and valorous smile, 

Deed and query and rime 
Shed in passing time, 

On tremulant life outborne; — 
Perchance to see a plan 
Somewhere through paths of man 
In the ages worn. 


36 


CONOWINGO 


T MET a girl in Conowingo, 

* Footing up river when I was strong; 
Wherever I’ve gone walking after 
She has been along. 

There was beauty—but I remember 
Only the smell of evening’s cool 
And one gnarled gum tree holding over 
Flame above the pool. 

Maybe it was her true upstanding, 

And level candor of life-desire 
In eyes that held below the laughter 
A flicker of hooded fire. 

Years run like the lower river— 

Sun-reach, riffle and boulder-spray, 

With hidden coves of scummed slack water 
Lingering in decay. 

But some things are that don’t grow older, 
Dreams may rival the worth of truth, 
Ever the Conowingo maiden 

Stands in a glowing youth; 

Beckoning often where night lours 
And stony up-roads slime with rain, 
Ardor after second fallings 
To go on again. 


37 



Hours from the haze of old Octobers, 

Some generous greetings as we roam, 
Faith of a friend and love’s prest roses 
Are all we carry home. 

If you ever come to Conowingo 

And stroll up-gorge in the autumn’s cool, 
See if our gum tree still leans over, 

Flame above the pool. 


38 


PEACHBOTTOM 



Inthrough the roar 
Do you not hear 
The bicker and snarl? 

(There was almost a scream — 
Choked at the close). 

Your father in dying 
Held to one fear, 

Of lost river-men crying, 

When the loose timber runs 
On June rising water. 
Merriman’s daughter 
And the pink neighbor girl 
Will grow fonder, more fair 
For some waiting and dreams. 
How it blackens out there! 
Can a river have anger? 

I am your mother; 

Don’t go to-night.” 

Far in the morning 
Came knocking her door 
Old Binney the raftsman, 
Quietly saying: 

“An hour or more 
I am hearing the call; 

First it came clearer; 

Drowned river-men crying 


39 



Mean someone is dying 
Alone on the uplands, 
Untended—or nearer. 

Where are your boys?” 

From their unruffled cots 
To the water she ran 
Calling each village man. 
Waiting long by the edge 
In a lull of the rain 
They heard a thin wail 
From the mad devils’ ledge— 
And again. 

“If their father were here 
He would bring them to me. 
Is it drowsing or fear? 

Do our river-men fail?” 

And for manhood’s token 
They laid one son, 

Gasping and broken 
On the sand by her feet 
In the morning. 

“Love will go over. 

Maids not to blame; 

I was the same. 

Man is the rover.” 

So she lay dying 
Many years after; 

June rising water 
Roared on the ledges. 


40 


“I hear you crying, 
My river-men bold; 
Here is your daughter 
Lover—and mother. 
Love will go over.” 


41 



SQUIRE DIMON 

QQUIRE DIMON never laughed nor wed, 
Told a story, held a child. 

Grew the wonder why he smiled, 

In the parlor lying dead. 

Spoke an aged river man: 

“When the mobbing raftsmen came 
He beat them with an iron hame, 

And chuckled softly as they ran. 

“One time (it seems but yesternight) 

While new hill-people ran the town 
And all his projects voted down, 

His countenance was ringed with light. 

“They say a jealous, addled crone 
Cried sorrow on his childbirth bed; 
Others, a wild girl won and fled — 

But so ’tis told of all the lone. 

“Now who will salve our legal wounds, 
Bring the orphan in her dole, 

Keep our borough honor whole, 

Run true line and set the bounds?” 

Jamming ice or timber fire, 

How to marry, when to plow, 

Pestilence or broken vow— 

Turned they to the silent Squire. 


42 


Rarely in his tired eyes, 

As they brought another load, 

Laval fires of humor glowed. 

Then they thought, he grows unwise. 

Living in the house alone, 

He could smell the deer at morn, 
Hear the growing of the corn, 

And the river’s undertone; 

And the upper winds that tell 
Of the burning of the rain 
In hills beyond the plain, 

And the shrinking of the well. 

Doctor found his organs wrong, 

Tried more playful ways to teach, 
Drew the old Squire’s longest speech 

“Each finds a crooked way along. 

“Where so many fume and guess 
Under screen of raucous glee, 

Going scared or giddily— 

There is room for soberness.” 

Moulder of a stubborn race, 

Worn and grooved by valley men, 
None could be so mean again, 

Having looked upon his face. 


43 



Maybe that is why he smiled, 

Lying in the parlor dead. 

“He has laid him down,” they said, 
“Sweetly as a sleeping child.” 


44 


TYASKIN 


G OING down from Baltimore 
On the steamer Avalon 
Seven men of everywhere 
For the Eastern Shore; 

One so knurled and illy wan, 

Crumple featured, scant of hair, 

Slued with palsy, cancer scarred — 
Made it seem a trifle hard 
For us to be jollying there, 

Six brown huskies out of war 
Marrowfatted, flush with prime, 

Care o’ women, scorn of time; 
Brought a doubt if things were fair, 
Where the jumble, whose the crime — 
What such addled life was for? 

Rocking through the Ches-apeake 
One of us gave steadying hand, 
(Wondering if he had a voice — 
Waiting for the squeak) 

Felt we never more would whine, 
Lighted him a gentle smoke, 

Told of times when we were weak, 
Queried where he hoped to land. 
“Tyaskin on the Nanticoke, 

God’s own favorite basking place.” 

In the flare his smitten face 
Glowed to sudden wistful charm. 


45 


“Never knew Tyaskin, Sir? 

Come ashore to-morrow morn 
Out to our new garden farm, 

See the sun go through the pine, 

And how thick the melons lie 
By the edges of the corn; 

Taste the sweet-potato pie — 

And then watch the smile of her.” 

Morning, we saw Captain Hurtt 
Screw the sturdy Avalon 
By the marshes nimly through 
A mile of thinnish dirt. 

“Port Tyaskin!” some wag cried, 

And rousingly the whistle blew. 

I recall duck-hunters grim, 

The buckled shed, a hound with fleas, 
And two sad ancient cedar trees; 

All’s now dimming memory save 
The woman who came down for him — 
Of a brightness where she stood, 

How both eager hands she gave, 

Kissed with lingering look and hold, 
Raised him queenly to her side— 
Drove away into the wood. 

“Skipper Hurtt, so gray and wise, 
River people your worn book; 

How gain and hold the glory look 
We saw in her eyes?” 


46 


He mused the twisted channel through: 
’“Somehow in the underplan 
Odd pairs ease the world along. 

Women marry round a man, 

Making things prove through him so 
Often he is bound to go 
Meandering in a pinkish fog. 

Give one anchor holding true, 

Eve’s havening, and a snatch of song, 

Fair aim, a healthy child or two — 

There’ll be homing in a bog, 

Or the tinselled city’s crowd.” 

Mate says: “The Cap’n ought ’o know— 
Being in his second cloud.” 


47 


THE OLD DRUNK MAN 


T OO deep the ashes on the fire, 

Too long alone with farm and wife; 
Pain, aging, stillness, love, desire, 

Brown drouth of meadows and of life — 
A little stammering of the will. 

And he is drunk in Laceyville. 

Huddled, befouled, a stain of blood, 

Inert as one that births or dies, 

From out the wreckage boldly gleamed 
A mellow wisdom of the eyes; 

And calloused worthy hands that gave 
Full story of the patient years — 
Moulded by rock and tool and frost, 

The warmth of babes, the damp of tears. 

The old bell calls to evening prayer; 

A somber man with leathern book 
Uprightly moves along the way 

And gives the drunken man a look. 

Around him in the faltering day 

The village people pause and nod; 

Under all the impartial earth 

At chemic play with king and clod. 

Perchance the old man through the haze 
Was given a rift of vision clear, 


48 


And saw upon the encircled fronts 
Emblazoned telltales of the year; 

And might have cried: “John Vellicore, 

A woman waits in Allentown, 

Heavy and wan, to see your face— 

And when will you be going down? ,, 

“Jim Bourne, no tailored cloth may hide 

The poison cankering through your blood. 

Yon bantering strong one stood and saw 
His friend go drowning by in flood.” 

“And you, young men, who laugh and leave 
To tell of this in church or hall, 

Make honest livings forty years 

Before you judge of faith or fall.” 

O you, who clasp the book and go 
Along the way with sober face, 

(And if your gilded heaven be true) 

And come at last unto the place 

Where all nations of the earth 

Their varicolored legions pour 

Across that threshold of last hope,— 

You may see through the narrowing door, 
All shining on the terraced hill 
The old drunk man of Laceyville. 


49 


HAPPY IS THE MILLER 


H APPY is the miller ,, — God knows why? 

Smut on his ear-drums, cockles in ’is eye; 

One foot in water and the other in the grave; 

There’s a situation ol’ Doc won’t save. 

With all them shiny-back books on ’is shelf 
You’d think he’d know a little keer of ’imself. 

But he never goes afishin’, nor into the town; 

An’ the bran on ’is bellows is ahardenin’ down. 

But he keeps on grinnin’, an’ if you say: 

“Mornin’, miller; it’s a lowery day.” 

Like’s not he’ll chirrup: “O, it’s good for moss. 
There’s ekal addition for every loss.” 

I tried to get ’im out linin’ bees. 

Sez ’e: “Them fellers really owns the trees. 

Such an okerpation would shrink my soul — 

Houndin’ a insec’ to ’is own knot-hole.” 

They call ’im educated an’ his judgment sound, 

But ’e wouldn’t know a weasel from a brindle hound. 
He takes a daily paper an’ owns a Russian bond, 

And buys the pickerel from ’is own mill-pond. 

One October when the gray squirrels ran 
I took ’im in the pasture an’ showed ’im where to stan’. 
He’d push on the trigger, then lay around an’ laugh, 
And the only charge ’e loosened hit ’is own bull-calf. 


50 


Can’t arger with ’im, for he won’t get mad. 

Every ail and sorrow I reckon he has had. 

With breath growing shorter and friends adiggin’ in, 
He goes on living like a young begin. 

No use trying to help some men. 

Loosen ’em, turn around, an’ there they are again. 
But it seems kind o’ selfish for to be so free 
While they hold fastened like a dooryard tree. 

When the malarie and the river fog 
Stick along the bottoms, old pancake dog 
Pulls my leggins till we duffle up an’ go 
Far on the mountain where the sun sets low. 

Town folks wonder how I eat alone. 

Give me rabbit-shoulder and a red corn-pone, 

Coffee in the dipper, tobaccy in the bowl— 

I’ll break even, and save my soul. 

Everything I come around fits like hair. 

Easy make a dollar most anywhere; 

Baskets, snake-oil, maple-juice and skunk— 

And last Fourth I baccied up asellin’ punk. 

If ill luck and people wouldn’t interfere, 

I could work a week or two and live a year. 

They draw me in their housens an’ I get the epizoo — 
And all their saving-doing only means more to do. 


Si 


When the evening air is liftin’ to our cabin door 
We hear the mill aclackin’ an’ the freight-trains’ roar. 
There ought ’o be a law to make fussers through the day 
Leave night solemn—for’t was meant that way. 

Happy is the miller—and so be I. 

Howsomever, he’s apt to up an’ die. 

And I’ll be a bearer—if this ol’ rotten cough 
Don’t get on my innerds and first me off. 


52 


DUTCH HILL PICNIC 


UT VANDUSEN lived up here, 

And funned our picnic every year; 
When she drove in, ’bout all you’d hear 
Was, here comes Et VanDusen! 


She wore the all-firedest colored clothes, 
And a slant strange look along the nose; 
Walking like this way with her toes — 
Same as old man VanDusen. 


If no one swung with Et all day, 

She would get in alone and lay 
To fall, or injure, so they’d say: 

“It’s too bad, Miss VanDusen!” 

She’d have ’em pump ’er tree-top high, 

Then slide half out with one long cry, 

And dangle there against the sky— 

Oh gosh, that Et VanDusen! 

They’d all rush in when she swung back 
And grab her, so she wouldn’t whack; 

And old Doc Mintz would cry: “Stand back! 
Give air to Miss VanDusen!” 

She tried to faint on Bender Knopp, 

But he backed up and let ’er drop, 

(They’d just been lawing ’bout a crop — 

Him and old Hank VanDusen). 


S3 



Then Et stiffed right out on the ground, 

And never moved nor made a sound. 

“She’s puttin’ on,” they whispered round; 

“Guess we know Et VanDusen.” 

So they sent me for brother Jeem, 

Playing first base on the team. 

“Oh, Et’s fell out the swing!” I scream. 

“Oh,-pfumph!” says Jeem VanDusen. 


54 


STARUCCA DAN 


/^ALM down traveler; you’re too fat 

Round the midriff. Here’s yer hat. 
We most had conniption, 

Fearin’ he would rip you one. 

Siddown now an’ listen hard; 

Boys’ll hold ’im in the yard, 

An’ see he gets a sizely snack 
Of Orlo’s yearling applejack. 

Whew! I’m glad I see your face 
Even-sided, and in place. 

Man aliving! when you know 
Who you elbowed off yer toe 
You’ll light out for Binghamton 
On the first caboose they run. 

For that’s Dan 
Gallivan, 

Prize horned buck 
Of Starruc; 

Blue steel pointed, 
Double-jointed, 

Undefeated quarryman. 

He’s built right up from the ground, 
Wisdom teeth the whole way round, 

Hot oil tempered through and through — 
Gosh! to own the luck of you. 

If ’ed had one drink more or less 
We’d be huntin’ your address. 


55 





When aliquorin’ up just right 
There’s a point where he’s perlite; 

Next he grows rampageous, 

Wanderin’—bilin’ for a muss; 

Look around for cover—then 
Bring on yer Suskahanner men. 

When Dan 
Gallivan 
Goes amuck 
Up Starruc, 

The lads lay out 
Like fried trout. 

He’s our tested 
Pigeon-chested 

Champeen rowing quarryman. 

Here’s Dan now. Say, stranger, we 
Liked yer pep, but hark t’ me: 

Slip right through this kitchen door 
An’ make for Suskee fast, before— 
Why yer coat off? Grab’em both! 
I’m town constable—on oath 
To hinder murder—holy bombs! 

At it like a pair of toms. 

There’s the stove down. Water, Orl! 
This ain’ no ornery barroom quar’l. 
Dan druv in a corner? Wow! 

That roun’ back little man kin row. 

O—ouch! he’s pastin’ Danny—whee! 


56 


Flat out. Come on—who’s helpin’ me? 
We can’t leave ’im losin’ blood- 
just because he ain’t no good. 

Warm here, whew! 

Well, that’s through; 

Things all end. 

Join me friend, 

Right up here. 

Only beer? 

You’ll soon know 
All Lanesboro: 

This burg’s yours. 

That dose cures 
Ramping Dan 
Gallivan; 

One big bubble, 

Houndin’ trouble, 

Full o’ pizen, 

Terrorizen 
All the town, 

Miles aroun’. 

He wa’n’t no real champeen—an’ 
Not even a good quarryman. 


57 



THE NEEDLE’S EYE 


'"J ~^HE needle's eye that does supply — 

You!—I am steady now, thanks—why 
Your bruited death at the Chateau? 

But down awhile; enough to know 
Which longing makes it hard to die. 

The thread that runs so truly — 

Intoiled again? I sent you free; 

Your words: To plunge the seas of Chance. 
It needed that half-death, and France, 

To feel the power of your decree. 

There's many a lass that I've let pass — 

Some cleft in every heart’s cuirass. 

Your promise—never to return? 

War cancels, re-enthrones; we learn 
Won barriers boldly to repass. 

But now 1 have got you! 

Save the inwall of pain and rue. 

You would law and time outbrave? 

I come across the world to crave 
The prisonment of being true. 

And they bq^v so neat; and they kiss so sweet — 

Think you I hover in retreat, 

Aloof, unbid, this amorous year? 


Unwed; enough. I only, dear, 

Bring youth and loving to your feet. 

We do intend before we end — 

They listen; when ’t is over wend 
Among the willows by the race. 

Our heaven is glowing in your face. 

We block the reel? Your pardon, friend. 

To have this couple meet again. 

The needle’s eye 

That does supply 

The thread that runs so true; 

There’s many a lass 
That I’ve let pass — 

But now I have got you! 


59 


UNCLE JOHN 

U NCLE JOHN is dead at home, 

Five feet down in yellow loam. 

Spite of all the speaker said 
Instant between live and dead 
Form adamantine barriers. 

As the swift gray change occurs 
Friends and lovers inly know 
They must to the living go, 

Finding there in thoughts of men 
Those who will not come again. 

In youth I sought him with a scroll: 
“Ungenerous the mother’s dole; 

How change the master’s record here 
To gain full wage before the year?” 

“Do you know any way?” said he, 

And drove crude honor into me. 

Anon came smirch of fair renown. 

Floods bore my timber fortune down. 

Home burned, care lined, heart’s inmate died — 
Till fear walked silently beside. 

“We all come through—in time; hold on. 
You’re still in place,” said Uncle John. 

How well he stood that withering fall 
’Gainst the red line and choking pall, 

When young men gathered in the town 
To watch the old hill trunks crackling down. 

I see again the ashen head, 

60 


The woodsman skill, dure faith that lead: 
“Your tools and shouts and liquor tire; 
We only fight big fire with fire. ,, 

He drew the full-grown perch at will, 
Stroked phoebe on the window-sill, 

Unto his hand hurt children came, 

He hired the indigent and lame, 

Dogs let him pull with humorous whine 
The festering quills of porcupine; 

Yet on his forehead like fresh char 
Shone the long blue-white bayonet scar. 

Whenever the tired crowders moan 
Too loud within these aisles of stone 
I can outdraw in dreams and be 
With him beneath the hickory tree, 
Where chore and destiny could wait 
The measured ringing of the quait, 
Through afternoons so loath to pass 
That Time for once dozed in the grass. 

Lie easy, Uncle John, the breeze 
Is purring in your orchard trees. 

Below Kim’s Island old bass leap 
And sprayings of remembrance keep; 

That youngling eagle o’er the bar 
Will waft some memory afar, 

And every youth who saw your face 
Goes on the way with surer grace. 

’T was good to die; there are no tears 
For eighty well-behoven years. 


61 


HICKORY DANCE 


P EG along, Rodney; chaw your cud and bear it. 

Day’s work only fittens me to cut a pigeonwing. 
They’re puttin’ out the parlor stove; children in the 
garret— 

And Iry is a pickin’ on the old D-string. 

Four men holdin’ a red headed feller; 

Somebody stepped on Garry Wefer’s hound. 

Dog to the barn, and Garry in the cellar— 

Lady in the center and seven hands around. 

They’ve bored Ol’s barrel o’ black-cherry cider, 

In a little longer there’ll be a little fight. 

Whoa, Curly! You’re a champeen glider. 

Bucks double-shuffle — alamand right. 

Iry is aridin’ on the old yellow fiddle; 

Eyes like a nazarite dying in a trance. 

Nigger in the corn, and hi-diddle-diddle! 

Gents in the middle and ladies take a dance. 

Charlie Bok chokin’ on a piece o’ peanut-brittle; 

Tried to make a flimflam, buying out the town. 

Just found a mitten in the maple sugar kittle — 
Balance on the corner and cut ’er right down. 

There’s a whine cornin’ in the old pine timber, 

Now all together till the purlines ring. 

Choose a gent, ladies, get ’im going limber, 

Roll your deceivin’ eye—cheat or swing. 


62 


Two straw ox-loads came from Honey Holler. 

Morey with the widow is sweatin’ for the heft. 

Time to buckle up, and loosen Eddie Bowers’ collar— 
Turn your lover twice around, grand right and left. 

Your left foot’s draggin’ there, last half hour; 

Don’t be dancin’ like a Randolph man. 

Free-for-all! pick a favor-ite flower, 

Whirl away outside — kiss ’em if you can. 

Parlor floor awaverin’; never mind the plaster. 

A little more rosum, Iry! Who said late? 

Wheel fatty Mayo’s down; give it to ’em faster! 
Balance your pardner and swing ’em out straight. 

Big Maggie Utter has fallen in a dizzy; 

Slosh on the water, for there’s very little air. 

Don’t lose the figure, here’s Tuscarora Lizzie— 
Promenade across the hall, an’ you know where. 

* * * * * 

Roosters acallin’, morning in the valley. 

I go plowing rutabaga ground. 

But all day long I’ll be dreaming of my Sally, 

Jigging in the center, with seven hands around. 


63 


CULTIVATION 


G OOD for cultivatin' ? Well, I guess. Just watch 
me through this row; 

An' if you don't say he peels the spots off* any hoss you 
know, 

You’re on the road to Dansville. Stiddy; careful with 
them feet. 

Observe how he maneuvers 'em, so cautious like, and 
neat. 

No shadder of a trade for him; 't would leave me plumb 
forlorn. 

For he's a joy at everything—and cultivatin' corn. 

Pa'ticular business, first time through. Hi! careful 
there, gee, gee-ee! 

D’ye hear me? Ouw! Come off that hill! Hey, 
stiddy; Can’t y' see 

What you're doin’? Thunder'n lightin’! Four more 
mangled! Haw—Gee—Whoa! 

Now see here, you old — see here now—you're goin’ to 
keep that row 

Or I'll carve yer hide to ribbins! For as sure as I'm 
born, 

You're the d-darndest fool I ever see—for culti¬ 
vatin’ corn. 

No, there ain't no thing the matter. Go in the house, 
and stay. 

Thinks we mayn’t run our part on 't; liken women 
folkses' way. 


64 


Go on, stiddy now! They ’low there ain’t no use of 
gettin’ mad. 

Maybe so; howsomever, I’m conshe-enshus glad 
There’s a new day, and forgiveness; for on the judg¬ 
ment morn 

Gruesome few will show up clean — that’s culti¬ 
vated corn. 


65 


RED ROCK SPREE 


H ANK OLER’S woman had ’er carpets up 
For a general cleaning, 

And as they were pullin’ from a quick-hash sup 
We come intervening. 

Sooner’n they could pucker a mouth to whine 
Iry’s fiddle was asquealing — 

So him and the missus they bucked up fine, 

And the whole down stairs went reeling. 

First couple down the center lead , 

Lady to the right an gent to the left; 

More style and action is all you need — 

Turn ’em on the corner . 

I’ve come ’way from Belmont Pike 
Sadly to remind you 

There’ll never he another one seem just like 
The girl you left behind you. 

Soon they was argerin’ politics, 

And a loud-spoking feller from the Highland 
Said there wouldn’t be so many schemish tricks 
If some folks stayed on a island. 

Dinny Cavanaugh leaped to the floor, 

Ready to fight creation; 

Lucky came the whistle of 24— 

And we all rushed down to the station. 

All wanted pardner with the new school-marm, 
But none of ’em dast go over; 


66 


So they sat around frettin’ and talking farm, 
Wondering how to mov ’er. 

Cross-eyed Galloway sauntered in, 

Full of nerve and cider— 

He went right over with a cat-fish grin 
And sat on the bed beside her. 

Hank ’lowed he couldn’t do that way there 
Without a introduction. 

Galloway give ’im a red-eyed stare, 

And it looked like heluva ruction. 

Right in the middle the bed-cord broke, 

And a couple o’ fat girls fainted; 

Out o’ the scramble and general choke 
They all come up acquainted. 

Second lady down the center go; 

Bow-kneed gent will follow. 

Shake-a-leg Bernie or they will know 
You re from Smokey Hollow. 

Ripple of ribbon for a girl y 
Hair-oil for a dandy — 

Nothing ever holds in curl 
Through a Red Rock randy. 

Elsie Killifer thought she knew 
How to fetch on Oliver Borum, 

So she flirted open with a Great Bend Jew, 
And fancy-danced before ’em. 


67 


But when 01 says, you have hurt my pride — 
And I think you meant sarcasm; 

She clinched her fingers with ’er thumbs inside 
And keeled right over in a spasm. 

Then Mrs. Killifer flopped down too, 

Howling, O my daughter! 

And them as managed the main halloo 
Saw she got most of the water. 

But Eph the caller wouldn’t let ’em stop, 

Yells—each one grab yer scorner! 

Swing ’em dizzy till their ear-rings drop, 

An’ balance on the corner! 

Back in the kitchen a row began, 

Over penny-ante. 

Somebody swatted a Kirkwood man — 

And the langwidge sounded Dante. 

Three-finger Biederman elbowed in, 

Says ’e, what’s all the trouble? 

When he come out on the side of ’is chin 
Was some consid’able bubble. 

Third couple down the center lead . 

The river-fog comes warning. 

This half hour shows your breed — 

Never care for morning. 

Iry is sleeping down to ’is wrist; 

Look at Marvie Warner! 

I’ll take another if you insist — 

Whirl ’em off the corner! 


68 


Hank tore in with features dire, 
Yaller-pale and trimbly: 

Save the women — the house’s afire, 
All around the chimbly! 

Eph the caller-off gayly sings: 

On with the Paris Lancers! 

All these exter-aneous things 
Go to the sofy-dancers. 

Last couple down the center wend , 
Languorous eyes adorn ’er; 

Maid and memory come to end , 

By many a sober corner. 

Rolicum , orum , weery 0! 

Merry the hour you prest her , 

Cozy tight in a buffalo , 

Over the hills to Lester. 


69 


AUCTION 


RTY I hear—who’ll make it the half? 



Fifty—seventy—who says one? 

They have rocked the same since love begun. 
One-ten now for the maple crib. 

Going—going!—that, young man, 

Was the merriest bid you’ll ever make. 

For a babe’s cry and a woman’s laugh 
Girdle the world and keep it true; 

And all from a poorman’s rib. 

(Another is blushing somewhere here) 

Forty—one-forty—who’ll cry two? 

I see little ones smile and wake; 

Who knows the greatness of afteryear 
This old cradle yet may hold ? 

One-forty—going, at forty—sold!” 

Conover, being too soon born they say. 

Lay there two years, doubting to live or die. 

I wonder if Aunt Harmony was glad 
To have raised him so—when all the valley seethed 
Around his turmoiled middle years. Was the power 
All bounden in that meagre pint of cells, 

Or did he garner from us, and the hills? 

Coming this morning over Blueberry, 

Down the new dug-road where his will had way, 
Sudden I felt great sorrow he was gone, 

Who had fought me all a lifetime with strange joy, 


7 o 


Won land, rule, office, woman—well, you know. 
Then it came: that all the people gathering here, 
And others far away, had heartier lives 
Because Aunt Harmony saved him in the crib. 

‘‘The yellow fiddle! Hand me the bow. 

Ah, for a friend to stay so true! 

I could draw the soul from it long ago, 

When I beaued Marie on the Ouleout. 

Three is the offer—the half—make it four! 

You buy no trinket of wood and glue, 

But memory and the heart of song, 

River bird warble and poet lore, 

And throb of dance in midnight rout. 

Only five for a famous violin 

That has quavered you glee the valley long? 

Six now-—and a quarter—the half—say seven! 
Who wakens the spirit here within 
May hold a bit of heaven. 

Bid joy till the last long bow is drawn; 

Going at seven?—once—twice—gone!” 

On Monday morning of the day he died — 

The old lady tells, and neighbors heard it too — 
Myron got out and took the violin, 

(His feet stone-cold, and trying hard for breath) 
Smelled it and fondled every feature over; 

And then with face aflush played slow three tunes — 
Zip Coon, Doxology and Money Musk, 

In tones that none had ever heard before. 


7 1 


First time I saw him in a harvest dance 
At Tuscarora ere the mill burned down. 

We quarrelled and were parted by the girls — 

How clearly I remember the two girls. 

He had a daunting movement of the head, 

And somehow we all knew a man had come. 

“Who bids fair for the walnut bed? 

Four-square standing the hundred year. 

One dollar, sir? — no charity; 

Generations foregathered here, 

And there’s honor if only in human life. 

Borned and loving, tired and dead, 

Tangled childer and new-brought wife 
Gladly sank to its cloistered peace. 

Two—and fifty — the quarter—three? 

Hardly one curly panel’s worth 
To the opulent city artisan. 

Bid up! for the commonest friend of man 
All the old way from quivering birth 
To welcome deep surcease. 

Buy rest and kindness—sovereign cures. 
Four-ninety—ninety and going—yours!” 

When the big fire broke through in eighty-three 
The folks came down red-eyed with smoke and fear, 
Until they sent for Myron Conover 
At Montrose on the Jury. Four wild days 
He raged around the valley head with arms 
And scorched face swathed in dripping gunny-sacks. 


72 


When all was safe we brought him on some poles 
To this same bed; and now I seem to hear 
The pitiable choking cry the woman gave. 

I would not care to be an auctioneer, 

Dealing with wreckage and the close of things. 
Myron is gone; but I shall hold the dream 
Of how he glowed in Tuscarora dance, 

And called us leading there against the flame. 


73 


HARFORD FAIR 


G OING down to Harford Fair- 
Hay! Sheer off that wheel! 
Red buggy and a morgan mare, 

Oats all in and nothing sore 
On the mind—what earthly more 
Worth hankering? Say, smarty, you 
Mayn’t know who you’re talking to; 
Clear away there, through or bust! 
We ain’t gnawin’ no one’s dust— 
Hang on an’ don’t squeal. 

At ’im lady! All right Flo, 

Stiddy—put your nose 
On ’is tail-board. He don’t know 
You’re quarter Hambletonion— 

This razoo is just begun. 

See that widening round the curve? 
Wait my kitten, hold your nerve. 
Race-track steppin’ don’t scare us — 
Out now, Florie, leave this muss. 

O girl, there she goes! 

In the ditch — so that’s your game. 

Cling to me, Meliss. 
Anyway, it’s all the same. 

Get over there! We country scrubs 
Can do a little lockin’ hubs. 

See Flo’s ears, and that low back. 


74 


Whow! I hope an ex don’t crack. 

Where is ’e? Broke and runnin’ wild; 
You’ll pick next time, my sweet town child, 
Something easier’n this. 

Sh—my beauty; musn’t chafe. 

Why so trembly, girl? 

Hang right on till you feel safe. 

Nothing strange to lose a hat 
In a scrimmages like that. 

I was hoping it would last; 

You and me and going fast, 

Samultaneous and close, 

Pretty near an overdose— 

Made my young brain whirl. 

Last fall I was here alone. 

Golly, see the crowd! 

When you drove in with Iver Stone 
I grew prickly hot and swore 
To have a dandy rig before 
Next Fair-time. In this whole fuss 
See anyone ashading us? 

And you all rose and dignified 
Sitting fairly by my side, 

Makes a feller proud. 

Gangway, neighbor—back up there. 

Want the earth and sky? 

You lay a finger on that mare 


75 


Or touch her bridle, I’ll come down 
An’ they won’t know your face in town. 
All right, Melissy, I’ll stay cool, 

But no pink-collared drug-store fool 
Can gaze at you that way an’ grin 
’Thout being liable to win 

A sober looking eye. 


There’s Aunt Mine and Uncle Prout. 

Auntie, here’s the girl 
I was raving so about. 

Saw us? Where’d we pass your load? 
Skinned everything along the road. 
Your old coon-dog living still? 

M’lissy goes to Factoryville, 

Knows languages and everything, 

Play melodion and sing 

To make your eye-teeth curl. 

Let’s go try the nigger’s head, 

So’s to get unwound. 

Quarter’s worth—that’s what I said. 
Wish they were regulation balls. 

Count my cigars. If that coon squalls 
I take the money back—room here! 

Hi—I! See that one burn his ear? 

On the dome! He’s turnin’ pale. 

Ha! wish you’re back in Montrose jail? 
What’s the crowd around? 


76 


Suskehanner band just come; 

Kelly on the snare. 

Wait till he gets a nip o’ rum. 

Team loose! ’Scuse me—now’s a chance 
I’m all right—except the pants. 

Who threw water on my shirt? 

Don’t sniffle, Lissie, I ain’t hurt. 

Stopped ’em ? They was going hot 
For that orphan group—who’s got 
Safety pins to spare? 


Well, if there ain’t Peever Wynn, 
Whiffleing away 
On that brindle violin. 

Two things never do grow old — 
Fiddler’s sloted eyes, and gold. 

Uncle Fergus used to say: 

Get well-off, or laze and play; 

Worst is half-way, to be prest 
By a collar at the breast 

All the livelong day. 

How the people’s faces beam, 

Kindlier and free. 

’Specially the women seem 
Turned years younger. See Ort Hume 
Sideling widow Immerbloom; 
Line-fence quarrels disappear 
When odds come together here. 


77 



Maybe all our hates would pass 
Getting folks out on the grass 
Acting naturally. 

* * * * * * 

Coming outfrom Harford Fair— 
Scrumptious day, Meliss. 

Prize geranium in your hair, 

Eyes sweet-weary — Here you, Flo! 
Hungry-homesick? Well then, go. 

Fair-day comes but once a year — 

Now I’ve caused a shiny tear, 

Swear I only meant in fun, 

Oughtn’t be so mad for one 
Little slanting kiss. 


78 


COUSIN EBER TINKLEPAUGH 



My dog Nippur went and lay 
His nose on Eber’s twisted feet 
And left me all alone to play. 

And early that same afternoon, 

When I was shished so he could nap, 

The old cat gone since yesterday 
Brought seven brand new kittens down 
And nursed them in the beggar’s lap. 

Ma prayed hard that night and looked 
Wide-eyed at me and tried to tell 
How God took many things away 
From some poor children so that he 
Could give them wondrous faculties 
That make the world more pure and sweet, 
And how we should be always glad 
When numerous dumb animals 
Born with no souls or consciences 
Found loving friends; but I was mad. 

Next Sunday we had riley words 
And so I hit him on the head 
Like you would any other boy, 

But he turned kind of bluey-gray 
And breathed like minnies going dead. 
Nippur grabbed my leg and pa 
Walked round the room and finally said 


79 


Perhaps I’d better go away 
To boarding school where wild galoots 
Got discipline—and often licked 
By older boys; till I went out 
Behind the hen-house wall and kicked 
A copper-toe off my new boots. 

We all grew friendly after while, 

In winter by the stove, and I 
Could tell him almost any lie 
And watch his wrinkly face to know 
Whether it would cry or smile— 
Everything went through him so. 

But just when sugar-time was come 
Eber coughed and had to go 
To a sanitarium. 

I wisht he was here again— 

No one now to bring things to; 

No one wonders what I’ve found. 
Nippur smells the chair and then 
Sags his ears and mopes around, 

And evenings everyone is glum. 

They say he goes bare in sunshine 
At the San — and sucks raw eggs. 

Ma prays strength for him at bed, 
And got all sniffly when I said 
I could lend him some of mine— 

I wisht he was here again. 


80 


HOUND 


UW—ouw—ah-ar-r-ouw! 
Straight over the ridges now, 
North into night and snow, 

Through hills I do not know 
The Lanesboro big fox goes. 

Blood of my ears and tail 
Drops frozen along the trail; 

Between raw stinging toes 
Drive the stubble and stone. 

And the lessening slaver dries 

Till my worn voice whimpers and dies; 

Yet I seem to be not alone— 

And I cannot fail. 

Ouw—ah-ouw— ah-ar-r! 

I follow near or far. 

For he led me wrongfully up 
His stench on a moistened wind, 
Slittered my ear and grinned — 

And I but a wambling pup; 

Worried me into the wet, 

Playing along the shore, 

Till my mother came over the moor— 
And we never forget. 

Ah-ouw—ur-r—ouw-ouw! 

Through laurel thicket and slough 
And trick of the icy stream 


8i 


I hold him here in the nose— 
Chief of our ancient foes. 
Sometimes I stagger and dream 
Of home in the river clove, 

And the brown bowl by the stove. 
Then a curling loin-pain grips 
The cry from stiffening lips; 
Through the snow-lit forest wan 
A scent comes down the breeze, 
New power springs in the knees— 
And I go on. 


82 


THE LITTLE BROTHER’S RIDE 


A BALLAD OF THE ALLEGHANIES 

7AKE, Homer, wake! your clothes are warm, 
* * Your father brings the red mare down; 
And you must ride by Mount Malone 
For William Bain of Travortown. 

“Quick, boy! it is your sister Nell. 

Drink this hot tea to make you bold. 

I hear the red mare at the door, 

And’t is black dark and growing cold.” 

They tied the tippet round his neck; 

They placed him on the sorrel mare. 

He spoke no work nor turned around, 

But straight into the dark did stare. 

“Now ride her fair to Mount Malone, 

And lightly till the road bends down; 

Then drive her for your sister’s life — 

If she drops dead in Travortown.” 

“And go to William Bain and say, 

Our sick Nell swoons and waits to die. 

She calls for him with her last breath: 

‘Bring William Bain,’ is all her cry.” 

The mother sobbed when he was gone. 

“He looked so small and white,” she said; 

Then wiped the tears and smiled and went 
To watch beside the daughter’s bed. 


83 


He rode her fairly to the height, 

Where from the cliffs the hoot-owl called. 

Quick shadows leapt across the path, 

And once o’erhead the wildcat squalled. 

He rode her lightly through the woods 
To where the road bends to the plain, 

Then broke a bough from overhead 
And wound his left hand in her mane. 

The watchdog howled, and he was gone. 

The startled sleepers woke in dread: 

“Who rides like that to Travortown 

Rides side by side with fear,” they said. 

“Who rides so hard through this dark night 
Hears moans, or sees a fresh wound bleed. 

One of three loads is on his heart— 

Stayed birth, or death, or some foul deed.” 

So Homer rode by farm and wood. 

He had no need of whip or word; 

The red mare felt the fear that clung, 

And knew the hope that in him stirred. 

They heard the village clock strike one 
The village lights were in their eyes, 

When struggling up the last long hill 
She staggered down and did not rise. 


84 



“My sister Nell is sick to die, 

And I am come for William Bain.” 

“He’s at the home of Edna Hale 

Where yonder light gleams in the lane.” 

He found the house of Edna Hale, 

And two that stood within the shade. 

They drew and kissed a fond good night, 
And still to kiss again they stayed. 

“I come for you, I come for you; 

Our Nellie faints and waits to die. 

She calls for you with her last breath,— 
‘Bring William Bain,’ is all her cry.” 

Along the lonely homeward way 
The little brother stumbled back. 

Strange voices whispered from the trees, 

And gray shapes thronged the forest track. 

In the cold pass he fell and slept 
To dream of summer play and Nell, 

Until a horseman o’er him leapt 

And thudded sparkling through the dell. 

The morning frost lay on the fields 

When he came down by Mount Malone. 

They heard a low knock at the door 
And found him lying on the stone. 


85 


The mother claspt him to her breast, 

“Ah, God! how small and white!” she said. 
He moaned as one in fever-sleep, 

“And is she dead? Is Nellie dead?” 

The mother kissed through her own tears. 

“She only lives to greet the morn. 

Her hand in William Bain’s is laid. 

She dies as fair as she was born.” 

The boy sprang up as from a sleep 
And cried as with a sudden pain, 

Then ran into the deathbed room 

And struck the arm of William Bain; 

And took his sister’s hand and stood 
Breathless as she, and all as pale. 

“I found him by her door,” he cried. 

“He stayed to kiss with Edna Hale.” 

“Oh boy, my boy! what have you done? 

You’ve killed her now; she passes now! 

She breathes no more—the pallor creeps; 

. The death-sweat gathers on her brow.” 

But slow the stricken girl rose up, 

And life-fires wavered in her eye. 

As from the grave they heard that voice: 

“I will not die—I will not die.” 


86 


The life-fire burned in her wan cheek, 

And slow and solemn came her cry: 

“Go back, go back to Edna Hale! — 

Now hold me, brother, hold me nigh.” 

And through the stroke that wakes the will, 
And will that lifts the sinking heart, 

All by the little brother’s ride 

She lived, to do the woman’s part. 


87 


CARAWAY 


O TO lie in caraway! 

And hear the ticking millions creep 
Inthrough their stemmy jungle hold, 

And feel the worms move in the sod. 

While ox-eye daisies twirl and nod 
Across the dimming rift of day. 

Then out upon the roads of air 
In a dream-car to gayly fare, 

Advancing brigandly and bold 
Along the woodsy edge of sleep; 

And at the rasping dooryard call 
Never to cringe nor move at all: 

“Edwin, come out and stir the hay— 

We know you’re in the caraway!” 

Life ripened in the caraway, 

By sun and mellow juices drawn 
From cells of rank primeval stores. 

All grace of schools, and firming chores, 
Gave less a form of man to me 
Than this brown earth’s rich disarray. 

Years crowd in futility 

Like an immuring desert stream. 

We own our heavens are wrought of dream, 
Yet murmur when the dreams are gone. 
Where round of boys have gladly lain 
Maybe the flair would come again, 
Conniving even Time’s delay— 

To lie again in caraway. 


88 


SEND ME WITH BEAUTY 


TDRONE drunk with youth and noon of summer day, 
The sky drawn low through clover frame above, 
A white cloud slowly spreads to filmiest gray 
And vanishes like morning dreams of love. 

Gazing into the blue unfathomable, 

Infinite, tomb of longings—I would know 
If this brief bodying of the beautiful 
Is all, now wholly lost to all below. 

The pliant spheres reune at some far height 
To sail the heaven in more resplendent form, 

Flared by the dawn to warn the lingering night, 

Or arched with glory in the passing storm. 

Old Beauty in and out with love or wrath, 

Dance-wreathing space and sun and lowly eye, 
Flames in the alley, blocks the mountain path, 

Weaves on through life and death—and cannot die. 

O God or force or mother or dumb cause, 

That brings us ever to an alien day, 

If there may be no certitude nor pause, 

Send me with Beauty on the unknown way. 


89 


ON THE WAY 


PASSION 

T HE past is dust of withered leaves. 

Beyond,— beyond? Ah, kiss. 

All wealth and lore of ages lies 
Here in the round depths of your eyes. 

The proof the potion and the prize 
Are in the hour—and this. 

THE WORK 

Cold, cold, my boy? The day is in the east. 

Come, strive with me here on this ledge’s top. 

I am the giant Sloth; put forth your best 
To hurl me over. Good! you weld and grow 
Like the young oak; three years and I’ll not say, 
“Come, cast me off.” Now like a man you throb; 
No borrowed fitful flare from torch or sun, 

But inner heat that follows act and breeds 
The greater action—inner fire that lights 
A way to make of morning dream the fact. 

The sun now through the flexure of the hills 
Pours his red life along the valley floor; 

And every flower from the bowed rest of night 
Rises jewel-crowned to meet the day’s emprise. 
How the light smiles upon that crescent plain 
Beyond the river; there lies truth for dream. 

Ten years ago—another morn like this— 


90 


I stood alone upon the height and saw, 

Where corn glistens and the soft grain waves. 

The dark miasmal tangle of the swamp; 

Looked through myself into far years, and warmed; 
Watching foul mists enwreathe the visioned change. 

And I have lived this decade — have found life, 
Making it leap across the desert’s edge, 

Urging a better kind into the marsh, 

Lived in the deed (in heaven maybe) and felt 
The old unrest go off like summer rain. 

Through the crushed embers of the passion fires 
Stronger with years the homely loves illume, 

And all dissevering forces of hot youth 
Bend to the current of a common good. 

O Time, go lingeringly! I have been given 
The place, the eye to see, the love, the will. 

There where the stream roars down the rift and eats 
Into the mellow bank the mill shall rise, 

Quick wheels sing a worthier song, and lights 
Flame in the far-off village, dimmed eyes smile 
And youth bend readier to the wisdomed page. 

Till you, alone — another morn like this — 

Shall see the hamlet crowd the fecund fields, 

And hear the brave bells welling through the hills 
The herald of a broader, kindlier way. 

The moment glows. My spirit mounts and calls 
For holiday and song, and yet—the work; 

It lies there in the valley, and we go. 


9i 


For this may be the white high day of life; 
The richest, or the holiest—or the last. 


EVENING 

Then gently as the bells are rung 
And tired questers gather home, 
The old day spreads upon our lives 
Its monochrome. 


92 


WHY DO I LOVE HIM 


\T7HY do I love him? 

* * Tell the wind yonder 
Stroking the river 
To beauty aquiver 
Never to wander 
From the cool hill, 

Rose not to spill 
Heart’s fragrance, fire 
Shrink from the tinder. 

No spur of will 
May loosen, thought hinder; 
How can love ponder? 
Destiny higher? 

I am behoven, 

Mergent, inwoven, 

Through—not above him. 

All to come after? 

Fair and storm-broken 
Days for our living. 

Spurn the misgiving; 

Worst dire unwroken 
Flees from an hour 
Breasted with power. 

He may go weary, 

Slacken and lour 
Under the years? 

So I’ve had wooing, 


93 


Shared glowings and tears. 
In scorn of undoing— 
Peace may endear me 
If only I hear then 
Clamor of children 
Running in laughter. 


94 


EVENING AT WYSOX 


OMILE on, my little one, dimple in the hollows; 

^ Maybe your crinkle-nose smells the shaken hay. 
Can you hear the pulley-whine, and the tweeting 
swallows ? 

Your eyes are like the sky in wells, fairest April day. 
Bubble, bubble, rosy mouth, 

The river sings, the wind is south, 

Father waves upon the load — be laughing while you 
may. 

O, the tears! my simple one, and the piteous quaver. 

Did a purple goblin peer above the door? 

Sob out your misery—men are little braver; 

Many joys of living come with sighing cares before. 
I hear the showered river purr, 

A wind is soughing in the fir— 

Come unto thy bosom-home and never trouble more. 


Nuzzle in, my hungry one, clutch with every finger; 

You may give the kindest hurt woman ever knew; 
Years away the memory of tiny nails will linger 

Where I pray you draw from me the innocent and 
true. 

Towser sniffles up to see 
Through our age-old mystery, 

But even daddy ne’er can know the love of me and 
you. 


95 


Sigh away, my weary one, sleep is coming after 

With leaden-gray to eyelids, pale amber for your 

brows. . , 

Day has given fear and change, growthiness and 

laughter, . , 

The cows are in the stanchion, sweet clover in the 

mows. 

Our river siths to sudden rain, 

And goes broodingly again— 

Three we lie, happily as ever earth allows. 


96 


SOFTLY YOU ENTERED 


OOFTLY you entered by the gate, 

^ A girl to shelter and caress, 

A fragile joy of curve and tress — 

And now you wield the shears of fate. 

Holding with insurgent dreams 

And curious thoughts that run and run 
Over barriers, to the sun, 

And sudden dazzling spirit gleams. 

An evening when athwart the west 

You watched the chromes of heaven flare 
I saw the wind play in your hair 
And the sweet liftings of your breast. 

You have quick tears for little wrongs. 

Did the lame bird against your cheek 
Whisper a word I may not speak? 

Are his lost carols in your songs? 

Sometimes in quiet hours I see 

Deep in your eyes the strength of Rome, 
With Indian splendors dome on dome, 
And wisdom of old Araby. 

The dust of rose and crumbled urns 
Faints in new fragrances of youth; 

Your brow is snowy calm with truth, 

But under, age-old passion burns. 


97 


The maid that goes austere, elate, 

Along the twilight mountains pale, 
Will yet run crying to the vale 
And wilding beckon for her mate. 


98 


THE DIVIDE 


IV" NOW why forester Neal turned right 
* ^ Where two dim valleys lay aslant, 

And strode unreasoning, jubilant 
Down to the woman that night; 

And you may dally with war and love, 

Fill dreams, chart lives, see each one whole — 

Or why she chanced to sing out her soul 
As he paused on the rock above: 

I will go with you as the rose of dawn 
Upon the forehead of the holden day; 

Bring the wild love that hears me from the moor — 
Adrift , away. 

I will he with you all the sullen noon , 

Sore where you bruise, and gladsome in your pride; 
Hold the worn love that queries nor repines, 

To eventide. 

1 will lead with you down the sunken road , 

Unto the river, in the waning light; 

Wait the old love that trembles through the dark 
Of the last night. 

Three stood under the sycamore, 

Poised—the ranger, smiling, fair, 

The gnarled brown cove-man from his lair, 

And rose-dark Elinor. 


99 


Elinor plucked by the older man 

From her lowland dreaming to grub and clean — 

Declining to know what some things mean, 

As a passionate woman can. 

Two felt smoldering life resurge, 

Through clarion days. No dreams were told; 
Only eye-gleams leaping bold, 

And the curious waves that merge. 

All might have passed if the forester, 

Called afar, had not overheard 
Blow and stifle and ugly word, 

And the tremulous cry of her. 

And where he had come but to say good-by 
In the high cove’s quiet afternoon, 

Were blood and curses and choking swoon — 

And some destinies awry. 

By the spring he laved to cool disguise, 

With a knife-point broke in the shoulder-bone, 
Rising to meet for the first alone 
A woman grown all eyes. 

Then silently upward with even pace— 

New life in the mountain day’s old wine; 

Till midway over the long incline 
They rushed to a mad embrace. 


ioo 


And turning later to look once more 
From the high divide on that scarred past, 
Saw the dun forest fire-cloud fast 
Drive toward the cabin door. 

“Follow back—I run,” said the ranger Neal. 
“He is broken and lies with heavy breath; 
And the red tongue lapping down is death.” 
But she clasped his thighs like steel. 

Caught in throe of a turbulent will, 

Raised and smothered and overthrown, 

His echoing footfall left her lone 
As the charred pine of the hill. 

Know why Elinor Gray went south 
To lights awink on the valley side, 

As the visioned bright years came and died 
In lines about her mouth; 

And you may barter gleam for gold, 

Fend fortune, toy with the germs of fate— 
Or why from the buffet of love and hate 
She turned to childhood’s fold. 


IOI 


THE HOLLOW FIELD 


S OMEWHERE the lilies bow to her, 
And the proud rose by her carest 
Exultant leaves the mothering earth 
To fold and die upon her breast. 


Across the oaten hollow field 

She sang into the misted morn, 

And I would give the years to be 

Where that bright day and love were born. 

The flowered minstrel summer hours, 

The tides of youth that press and yield, 

Past like old music heard in dreams— 

And left the lonely hollow field. 

If love could close as love begins, «• 

Or flame to earth with martyr cry, 

How bravely would we run to live— 

If love could only bravely die. 


102 


MICHAEL ANGELO AND THE STUDENT 


/^\N the mantel crowded low 
Stood the bust of Angelo. 
Underneath, a country youth 
Lay beaten in the maze of truth; 

Inert as one beside his shield 
Moulds to the hollows of the field 
Where through murky close of day 
Battered legions crawl away. 

He heard the homing clamor die 
Into an ailing infant’s cry, 

And bells of faith being sweetly tolled 
For penitences manifold. 

Then slept to dream of hours that drew, 
Bird-sung, from slopes of morning dew; 
And rising with hope’s new ingress 
Cried to his garret’s emptiness: 

Sun, and the river’s yellow light, 
Love’s glance by day, her arms by night, 
Are mine!—nor all the tomes of age 
Shall fend me from my heritage. 

Warm blood again like April rains 
Drives at the walls of my flat veins; 

I will — he paused as one that hears 
A dead mate call from vanished years. 


103 



A slender moon-ray’s fining grace 
Had stol’n athwart the master’s face, 
And brought the glow of genius there 
As when all souls he did outdare. 

The gray lips moved as to a word, 
And then the tranced student heard: 

Look on the faces 
Of them that last 
Out of all past , 

Climes and races — 
Burthened and ghast, 

Scored as with fire , 

Dearth and desire; 

Life’s chosen hand , 

Grimly they stand , 

Marble and bronze , 

In the open places. 

Toil or brief splendor — 
Choose ye , and hold. 

Love to the bold , 

Grace for the tender; 

Half is untold 

To the bounteous clever. 

Main of God here 
Is that slow will 
Urging us still 


104 


Through aging and fear, 
Earth and heart's cold. 

To endless endeavor; 
Never surrender. 

On the mantel hid and low 
Stands the bust of Angelo, 

And bending there a pallid youth 
Seeks again the prisoned truth. 


105 


BY A VILLAGE WINDOW 


H E is gone by under the flowers; 

And I wonder a little at having no tears, 
But a press of the joy that grew late years, 

In quiet hours. 

There over-river the two oaks stand, 

Where first I knew he would never know — 
Blandly unseeing my lips fire-glow, 

To kiss a hand. 

Neighborly clear our courses ran; 

And a fortune-woman early told: 

“You pi ay have lovers till you are old — 

And love one man.” 

Here on the palsying slope of life 

I’m glad to have twice been nobly wed, 

Borne and nurtured* and swathed the dead, 

In realm of wife. 

His going over is no end; 

Last heart’s quiver will be a throe 
For one held luckier not to know 
He could never be friend. 

Dreamily far our days outspun; 

Now he is memory, and deeds. 

I have had what woman needs — 

And loved one. 

106 


TWO MEN IN A VALLEY 


\ \ 7E toiled for years together by the streams 
* * That wear and shift the glittering sands of gain. 

I called him friend, thinking I knew him, well — 

His pleasure and his pain. 

So like the varying seasons we passed on 

Through vales of gloom and radiant avatars; 

Wed, buried, quarrelled, fell and rose again 
With the abiding scars. 

Till, in one hour of flame-lit flood and fear, 

Where chance and choice and destiny had part, 

I broke through all that I had known, to feel 
The red bands of his heart. 

Now is the valley nobler fate—our home, 

Fuller of light and manlier thrusts of truth. 

At times again the flower-smells drift, bees hum, 

As in the throb of youth. 


107 



A SONG FOR MIDDLE AGE 

C OME in, swift years, and use me up! 
By toil and sport and reeling blow. 
Take youth’s last drips of overflow; 
Drain heart and head —and turn the cup. 

The road behind is overlaid. 

Here—is but hostel for a day. 

All I have learned along the way 
Is not to hate nor be afraid. 

No more intent to scan the whole. 

All things return; there is no haste. 

The prayer is not to mire and waste 
In some recession of the soul. 

So on; till dimming eyes shall see 
A moment in the wonted place 
A fair hand, or a dead friend’s face— 
That fading turn to threnody. 

Come, years! and tingeing brown to gray 
Bring meed of peace, and share of pain. 
Then let the hoary gatherer’s wain 
Find me along the worn highway. 


108 


STILLWATER FARMER 


r | s HIS is the place, 
Under the wind. 
Pines on the hill 
Bicker and strain, 

Riven, thinned. 

Lower the pack, 

One use for a back 
To hover cool ground. 
Lie here and dream; 

All is not will, 

Fervor of brain. 

Where are you bound ? 

Is life a race? 

Below in the gorges 
Toil and thrown water, 
Upland for miles 
Islanded ripple. 

Here the held stream 
Broodingly smiles, 
Harkens, turns mother 
Fecund and deep. 

She is not asleep; 

Leaping fish gleam, 
Louder the song 
Of cricket and bird, 
Tropically strong 
Springs the shore growth, 

109 


Where ten thousand 
Rivulets pour 
Through mossy slucies 
Brown hill juices 
Musically down 
To the valley floor. 

Till loaded with treasure 
Leisurely then 
She moves to the tryst 
Of the lower mountains; 
And out from the mist - 
Of the hemlock glen 
In a lunge of new youth 
Gayly emerges. 


The purple leaf 
With dragon-fly on 
Is going a third 
Round of the eddy. 

Maybe the duty 

You burn with counts less 

Than its drifting beauty. 

Call in thought and eye, 

You scatter abroad 
Like shooting-stars, nowhere; 
Not to be somewhere, 
Aggregate, steady, 

Is early to die 
In a sparse unbelief. 


no 


You will go down 
Where hidden wheels 
Churn the pent river 
To power and light, 

And men in a darkness 
Deeper than night 
Wearily drain 
Essence of fire 
From earth the great giver. 
And build tier on tier— 

Do they add to the brain? 
Have they striven above 
The old sickness of fear? 

Is there more gladness, 

Pure splendor of love 
In the glittering town? 

And you may remember 
On a far day, 

Straighten and rest, 

Laugh out, see clearer, 

Hold your turn dearer — 
How you were prest 
By a gray farmer 
Heedless to stay 
With storm bending over, 
Through a thrice blest 
Noon of September. 

Still valleys reward 
Their lovers who wait. 


in 


For joy of speed 
Some must be late. 

The generous state 
Holds sitters and talkers. 
Thinkers apart, 

Benign, unafraid, 

Hunters and fishers, 

Good natured well-wishers 
Who fiddle and read; 

Blockers of greed 
And holders of land 
Where brain works with hand 
As we seem to be made. 

For who are the high, 

The happy and safe, 
Successful, enthroned"? 

Life’s a whole, 

Follow through 

Till they slacken and die, 

Naked, condoned; 

And the measure shows true 
Where lines on the chart 
Of the kingly and low, 
Day-worker and boss 
Cross and recross 
As the strands of one cord. 

Immured, barren? No. 

My road through the clove 
Bears a commerce of youfh. 


11 2 


Farm, mill, ferry are truth. 

Often to rove 

Is a form of retreat. 

Durable men 
Grow from the earth’s 
Leafage and milk, 

Wind-hardened, drilled 

For strong peace—warrior-willed. 

Even age may be sweet 

Where grandchild to sire 

Circle one fire 

In faith — must you go? 


113 


CANOE 


H EAVE along, heave along, 

Swinging away from care and wrong, 
Lift of love and the current strong 
Bearing us on together. 

Sway and dip down the eddying tide, 

Graze the rock and laughing glide 
Out on foamy pool to ride 
Light as a fallen feather. 

Let eye meet with eye till fires 
Flame and feed on new desires, 

And when the lingering kiss expires 
Know that all worth knowing 
Still eludes the bookman’s quest— 

O, ho! he is seeking east and west; 

Will he never turn to a shaken breast, 

Nor follow the warm blood’s flowing? 

Heave along, heave along, 

Lift of love and croon of song, 

Honor and youth and the current strong 
Bearing us on together. 

Drifting under whispering boughs, 

Speak the dream, though it end in vows; 
For best to a man the world allows 
Is a maiden’s heart in tether. 


RIVER SONG 


T^ALLING, falling, ever calling, 

Day and night and into day; 

Nursling of the primal glaciers, 

I shall see the world grow gray. 

Flowing, flowing, ever growing, 
Downward to the sea I glide, 

Fed by fountains from the mountains 
Where the cool mist-maidens hide. 

All this throbbing, murmuring, sobbing 
Is my spirit-stir in sleep; 

And these bubbles all are troubles 
Cast up from the secret deep. 

Falling, flowing, never knowing 

Turn to doubt nor time to pray, 

I am giving to the living 

Of my being, all the way. 


ONE SUMMER 


I N this green vale among the wooded hills 
We loved the summer through. 

“ Answer of dreams, our love is like the day, 

That turns upon a fairer world alway; 

Only be true.” 

The heavens were near that night: “Our love, she 
said, 

“Shall never end till all these stars are dead.” 

We smiled through tears and parted; and the power 
That moves us here and there, 

Seemed with our lives to play a wanton game, 

Driving between us toil and doubt and shame, 

And aging care. 

“He passed me near—so near, and did not come.” 
And one who knew why I had passed was dumb. 

I’m here again at evening, and the vale 
In starlit slumber lies. 

I know at last that all the prizes won 
Are winter burdens waiting for the sun 
Of your brown eyes. 

Sweetheart, come back! — the old stars shine above; 
And life holds but one summer and one love. 


116 


TOR-TOR 


T WENT half waken to the mother’s bed 
And saw her wandering eye. 

‘‘The child is brooding-queer and cold,” they said; 

“She will not cry.” 

Morrow, when from the balm of Gilead tree 
An oriole first sang, 

My hot tears burst their wall of agony 
To drown the pang. 

Gray chicadee upon my wedding morn 
Came calling, tor, tor-taw. 

I leant and breathed the river and the corn, 

And felt the law. 

Full kindly ran the years till on a day 
Our hold was swiftly robbed. 

The afternoon of burying them away 
A cuckoo throbbed. 

Sing oriole and flame the orchard marge, 

Sad cuckoo hold the wood. 

You carry joy and sorrow’s deep surcharge 
In faith and good. 

But best hear at the window as I go 

The gray friend’s taw, tor-tor; 

Feel we two sang awhile, nor grieved to know 
What life was for. 


ii 7 


FROM THE WARS 

THREE BROTHERS 


-Cook 

-Cook 

-Cook 

(Wyoming Battle Monument) 

T HREE young men 
Dead on a plain 
By a bright river. 

Owning no land, 

Dreading no law 
Nor god or man— 

Why did they plan 
To die so soon, 

With friendly sun 
On the hills as ever, 

That afternoon? 

Not nameless then; 
Somewhere a mother 
Dowered them well. 

And when the red fiends 
Poured from the marsh 
With finishing yell 
Steadily on — 

Maybe once again 
Brother called brother, 

“So long, John!” 


118 






A step away 
In the forest marge 
Love, work and years 
Beckoning lay. 

But they had quaffed 
America’s streams, 

Seen the embers 
Of Liberty fires, 

Caught rare gleams, 

In the clear light, 

Of fairer dawns 
And the eagle’s flight; 

So in that hour 
Could do no other 
Than on Freedom’s flame 
Throw life and all— 
Even name. 


HILL MAN 


J OE JERRY hoed in a stony field. 

Under a sweltering sun. 

The boy and the rock and native weed 
Fought for the life in a battered seed, 

And the struggle was just begun. 

“Get out of the mud and follow me,” 

Said the man with better clothes. 

“Against you are vermin and drouth and frost; 
You anger nature with labor lost— 

Come where a fair wind blows.” 

But the boy digged on in the stony field, 

With the struggle barely begun. 

“I put the seed in this ground,” said he; 

“I think I had better stay and see 
Whatever may be done.” 

Joe Jerry quarried and placed the stones 
And fitted the timbers true. 

Neighbors came with fevered eyes: 

“Gold!—pans of gold—out there it lies! 

Shall we wait a day for you?” 

A love-voice rifted the evening calm, 

Singing the death of day. 

A tired child came and went with a kiss. 

“I have a wife, and a house—and this; 

I think I had better stay.” 


120 


Red war cried to the souls of men, 

There is honor and gain for all. 

‘‘I have a dying wife — and these; 

I will stay with them, if it so please.” 

But he went at the second call. 

Joe Jerry hoed in a stony field 

By the house with the timbers true. 

“Come with us, old man!” Yet he gave reply 
“I have friends and use, and a place to lie — 
Here I will live it through.” 

The steadfast hills, the unfaltering stream, 

A full-lived, faithful man; 

Each morning all in their time and place, 
Night hallowing service done with grace — 
What more was in the plan ? 


121 


MANILA BAY 


O UICK lights flared on the looming isle, 
And red flames blurted into the night; 
But the silent man on the cruiser’s bridge 
Turned not to left nor right. 

Eyes that gaze on the unborn years 
May not be troubled by lights or tears. 


The warm sea hissed to the touch of shell, 

And reared on the back of the buried death; 

Yet the seaman gray with his tools of war 
Slid sullenly past Corregidor, 

And was gone like a spirit’s breath. 

Men that move to the tryst with fate 
May never be noisy, and never late. 

The harbor glowed to the orient morn; 

The men stripped buff, and said no word. 

Then down on spluttering fleet and shore 
Still as phantoms the gray ships bore, 

Waiting the call of the Commodore— 

That all the nations heard. 

“You may fire when ready,” was all he said; 
But the enemy’s decks grew strangely red. 


Out from the narrow channeled throats, 
Tense with wrath of the years of wrong, 
The little black demons leapt away. 


122 


Shrieked and whimpered over the bay, 

Crooning a direful song. 

Men that hurry to war in ships 
May kiss cold faces, with colder lips. 

White waved over a battered wall; 

The harbor stilled, the banners furled. 

Anglo-Saxon, East and West, 

Met ’round a wondering world. 

When a nation clogs in the wheels of Time, 
Comes cursing and crushing—and work sublime. 


123 


AMERICA REPAYS 

P OUR out your treasured Liberty, O States. 

The clenched East waits 
With surgent breath and eyes across the sea. 
Bent low in iron hail 
The older nations fail; 

The hour is come to prove that we are free. 

Three centuries of Europe’s chosen blood 
In eager flood 

Ran through our veins till we are heavy grown. 
Now thick with earthy dross, 

Fear we its urge and loss? 

For so great gift what service may atone? 

The calloused, patient toilers of all lands 
Tug at their bands, 

While farther still the battle clangor rings. 

For us the Old World waits; 

Dare all—give all, O States, 

Strike for the ending of the out-worn kings. 


124 


SOLDIER HOME 


T T E went to war with the kiss of a woman glowing 
Upon his lips like fire; 

Swelling the tide of a country’s manhood flowing 
The where, through fortune dire, 

A tyrant-burdened race was dumbly reaching 
Faltering hands to Liberty, and teaching 
The world’s desire. 

He came from war with the great and lowly thronging 
To glimpse his victor crest. 

A nation cried: “Make known thy deepest longing; 

We move at thy behest”— 

And waited wondering at the soldier’s dreaming. 

Came answer: “I would see my own hearth gleaming, 
On her—and rest.” 


TWO TOGETHER 


S TAY, and watch the tired day sinking 
Below the hill where first we drew 
That thin space nearer; I am thinking 
How your head to my shoulder so, 
Comes ever new, 

Old as wooing 
Yet ever new. 


In the close hours with you I wonder 
How any cause that nealed us one 
Could gain by ending two asunder 

Who have outgoing joy and grace 
Only begun, 

Valor of living 
But well begun. 


For there’s other in mating than home and childer, 
Loving is more than giving all — 

Visions outproving, powers that bewilder, 

And above and onward, seeming near, 

The spirit call, 

Two together 
Hearing the call. 


126 



Till the bounty fails, and we dissever 
Body and soul in the cosmic play; 

But our gladness and work are one forever, 
Quivering through new lovers athrong 
The grooved highway, 

Two by two ever 
Down the old way. 


127 


GRAY WORLD 


T HE hue of the world is gray. 

Splendor of young eyes, 
Storm-bow, oriole, flower, 

Blood’s red and the rose, 
Hill-framed lazulite skies 
And the sun-path’s gold — 

Are fair guests of an hour; 
Tremblingly they glide 
From our too eager hold 
And shade away. 

Mainly we come and go 
In a somber tone of mist, 
Bordering night, wan spaces, 
Rock and the endless slime — 
Bearing over and through 
(Like a color of thought or time) 
Birth-cells and all dead faces, 
And those no longer kist. 

The rarest noon 
Flaunting tinted graces 
Over morning’s rime 
Wanes and merges soon 
Into afterglow. 

Happier those who feel 
Early in life’s travail 
The great winds hurrying by 


128 


Colorless, or pale 

With spindrift of the plain, 

Long fog over seas, 

And the infinite dun waste. 

Less in vain 

Shall seem the immuring haste 
Of beauty’s hour to these; 
Undismayed and hale 
Graciously they stand 
Deep in the real. 

And joy the more when flare 
Autumn, youth and star 
Gayly athwart the west; 
Signaling back with deed, 
Aureole dream, desire — 
Love-illumined quest. 

For the clearers answer with light, 
Glow in the woods, strike fire, 
Press where demons lour, 

Beam on the edge of night; 
Never crying need 
Of torch-boy—sunnier days, 

Nor a heaven afar; 

Till watchers on the tower 
Cheer in the morn to see 
Their courses through the haze 
Shining fair. 


129 


WHEN WINTER COMES 


W HEN winter comes the music of the woods, 
Save some far-carrying cry 
From out the wildest deeps, 

Sinks suddenly into an icy sigh, 

And nature sleeps. 

When winter comes the glistering rivulet, 

That all the summer long 
From underneath the hill 
Sent up unpraised its daily gift of song, 

Is hid and still. 

When winter comes a silence broods and falls, 

As into death. Bend low 
And listen: ah, there rings 
Through frosted forest-aisles a cadence slow; 
The brook still sings. 

When winter comes upon my head and thine, 
With peace and childhood near, 

And hope in sunset skies; 

The few who bend and listen still may hear 
Faint melodies. 


130 


THE FERRY 


(Twenty to Seventy ) 

—VER, o—ver, o—ver! 

^ Ferryman, speed. 

Link the new dream with deed. 

Out from the somber cove and tethering vines of 
home, 

Down to the ships, and crowds good natured weaving 
narrow gleaming ways—enurge I go, 

Over earth’s last curve in the afterglow, 

Long and free to roam. 

Ferryman, speed. 

O—ver, o—ver, o—ver! 

Ferryman, sing. 

Bound by word and ring. 

Flower of the valley grown of sweetness out of our hills, 
(Gently, ferryman) far she comes in joy to be neighbor, 
lover, friend — and beauteous wife. 

Velvet the air inbreathes and the vale is rife 
With chime of a thousand rills. 

Ferryman, sing. 

O — ver, o—ver, o — ver! 

Ferryman, come. 

Be as the river, dumb. 

It laved my moist red stains quietly dun and gray. 


A simple blow, but iron of the hame sank into his head 
as he smilingly bore me down like a serf or cur; 
We two there in the quivering hover of her— 

So sudden all’s wreckage. Away! 

Ferryman, come. 

O—ver, o — ver, o—ver! 

Ferryman, row. 

What ails the river flow? 

Bend, old man! We ride the race with death. 

Her strange eyes drive me halfway wallowing here; 
(Ferryman, press with the back—I have power, 
gold.) 

They were sunken fires, but her feet grew sweatily 
cold — 

And the thing she would say came breath. 

Ferryman, row. 

O—ver, o — ver, o—ver! 

Ferryman, rest. 

(Who knows which hour is blest?) 

And watch the leaves going down gayly as ever they 
twirled. 

For we have had time, and a round of curious life all 
told — full gamut, from death to the dance; 

Slid through a thousand bickering narrows of chance, 
On the brim of a whirling world. 

Ferryman, rest. 

O—ver, o — ver, o—ver! 

Ferryman, wait. 


132 


Come early or come late, 

All the same to him now in the curly-walnut case. 

The waters gurgle and purr by the river-road of his play¬ 
time and peace, and rare bold meteor-gleams; 
But the wilding look, and the love and drive, and the 
dreams— 

Are gone from his face. 

O—ver! 


133 


MOTHER 


W ITH death at morn, a mild elation spread 

Through all the place; she had been ill so long. 
Her funeral day passed with strange energy, 
Brave word and song. 

Kindness flowed from far unwonted holds. 

The hills drew near; fair gold the river shone. 

Only the father with an awful face 
Sat still alone. 

Years ran and laughed with years. The wolf-pack cares 
Fled every morning from the front of youth; 

Joy in the hour, fear, wrestle, blood, and love — 
The clinch of truth. 

Then from a height I saw the ends of life; 

A woman’s footmarks traced my thoroughfare. 
Turning to view the path into the west — 

She waited there. 

Mother of men, forgotten of our prime, 

Silent beside us all the upward way, 

Lead o’er the plain to where the dun sky soothes 
The narrowing day. 

To meet no more—hand, brooding look or kiss? 

Some heaven then to know how far through me 

Flow measured streams of that primeval love — 
Her immortality. 


134 


And when the dark that is nor night nor shade 
Steals down the casement, as the birth-light 
Like men before I shall behold one face, 
And breathe the name. 


135 


came, 


RIVER MOUTH 


S O this is all. I thought to come 

Unstartled on the widening place; 
Nor feel this tingling of the face, 

And the core-fibres numb. 

But cleaving out through isle and tor 
Send echoing a brave tattoo, 

And one full-throated, stern halloo — 
As in the gage of war. 

Yet something under earthly fear, 
Beyond all effort or dismay, 

Holds me unblinking in the gray 
Slow-eddying silence here. 

Welcome a wraith, or lost fly’s drone. 
Thanks now for all we don’t foresee; 
I never dreamed that one could be 
So utterly alone. 

And I am made the less forlore 
To feel the hill-waters’ fatal urge, 
And see strange ocean vapors merge 
The dim receding shore. 

Only it seems a waste of power, 
Augmented pain and crude satire, 

To have the heart-burn and desire 
Come unto this last hour. 


136 


When strengths and virtues manifold, 
Mirth, fervor, beauty, courage — all 
So autumn kindly wane and fall, 

While love grows illy old. 

Clearer now it comes through this: 

These lingering things were ever best — 
Spendings, bold forays to the west, 
Mother and lover’s kiss. 

Given the stream to cruise again? 

I would slow waters hurry through 
To play the rapids—fame or rue — 
With eager hearted men; 

Follow where outdoor talkers wend, 

Moor longer by the village shore, 

And oftener pass an honor o’er 
To linger with a friend. 

Of all the crowd along the way 

A crippled chore-man stays supreme, 
Who with true word and gay eye-gleam 
Memorialized a day. 

Evening, near Roaring Spring 

Rowed two women lined and gray, 
Singing after labor’s day, 

Laurel blooms to bring. 


137 


By Nescopeck (the night—how fair!) 

A Syrian maiden ran to me 
Crying half in fear and glee 
The fire-fly in her hair. 

Brawn Meshoppen quarrymen 
Roistering at the inn, a hound 
Wrongly maimed; the poet found 
In Wapwallopen. 

And one long yellow afternoon 

Enisled where loving parents roam, 
Dream-wondering how followed home 
The river’s doubled moon. 

Not memory these—each as a dart 
Of being from the darkening past— 

Life missiles, they come winging fast 
Into my stilling heart. 

Where now the townsmen’s reddening cheer, 
The medaled breast, piled gold and power? 
In this bald honest dying hour 
They are not here. 

Nor largess well received and given, 

Sadness outdured, pains that rive; 

Only those meagre hours survive 
Were fullest loved or striven. 


138 


Save as transient Beauty smiled 
Unbid above the rutted road, 

Where comrades leaning on the load 
Nagging time bequiled. 

How many miles of smooth and rough, 
Hard-footed trails and spaded ground; 
With weary thinkings round and round — 
O, life was long enough. 

I have found little worth in place, 

Nor prayer, nor all the skills that fend. 
One narrow hope holds through—to end 
With an unbeaten face. 

No better chance by Helicon 

Or Tiber; here was time and hold. 

And all we stirred within the mould 
Inures and carries on. 

Gone are the querying and chill 

That trembled through an hour ago. 

Sweet calm! One needs a death to know 
The turbulence of will. 

My cells of husk are pale and thin 
This rapt engagement to appease; 

Yet, on the morrow even these 
New life may enter in. 


139 


Now memory sea and sky are one; 

In them and darkness I am buoyed 
Mergent, resistless, undestroyed. 
How easily 9 t is done. 



FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF THIS 
BOOK PRINTED ON VAN GELDER PAPER AND 
THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED IN THE MONTH OF 
OCTOBER MDCCCCXXIV 



































































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